When life gives you lemons, make the lemon pound cake from our February cover. This saying isn’t far from the truth for Southern Living staffers, who found themselves trapped at work due to the unexpected snow and ice storm that enveloped the South—including our hometown of Birmingham—this week. Cars were stranded, families were separated, and the whole town literally (and figurtively) froze.

The silver-lining for our snowed-in staff is that our office includes 7fully-equiped kitchens, talented chefs, and pantries filled with the South’s favorite groceries. Homemade biscuits and bourbon-based cocktails? We just wished we could have shared them with our neighbors.

A bountiful basket of homemade biscuits? Now that’s our jam.

Test Kitchen professional Angela Sellers was cooking up a snow-worthy storm.

Colleagues gathered around the kitchen island for a smörgasbord of Southern dishes.

And this wouldn’t be a complete Southern supper without an (impromptu) bar cart. In times of emergency, we have no problem trading Waterford Crystal with Dixie Cups.

What about you? Did you get stuck in traffic for—I don’t know—12 hours? Did you experience or witness Southern hospitality from a stranger? Share your Southern snow stories with us below!

COMMENTS

Helen

we were snowed in earlier in January and made the Lime pound cake, Everyone loved it, made 2, and half of my FB friends did too. Loved it.

February 3, 2014 at 4:49 pm

E. Godfrey

What, you didn’t give the recipe for the biscuits. Why is it that southerners crave biscuits so? After a grueling 8 mile hike from their abandoned car to my home on the other side of Double Oak Mountain, my son and his wife asked for homemade biscuits. We repeated the same scenario for the next two days. :) Being southern is the bomb.

February 2, 2014 at 9:11 am

cynthia booker

Many people I know who did not lose power turned to the kitchen to get by. By phone reports and Facebook postings, I know there were big pots of soup or chili or stew on stoves all over Pensacola.
I made biscuits, too, and for the first time used Crisco baking sticks, and thought the results were better than I had ever made before.

February 1, 2014 at 2:54 pm

Bevin Landrum

Those are some good looking biscuits! How does one grow up to be a cook in the test kitchen or even better a taste tester?